Among other things, Musk is currently fueling the open-source, non-profit org.OpenAI in its efforts to make automatons capable of teaching themselves to care for us through simple, high-tech trial and error.Co-founded in 2015 by Musk, Peter Thiel, and other post-primordial tech deities, the artificial intelligence (AI) research group has received over $1 billion in support of its goals, such as "to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return [...and to become] a leading research institution which can prioritize a good outcome for all over its own self-interest."

(Courtesy Fetch Robotics, Inc.)

With robotic helpers from industrial-supplier Fetch Robotics as hardware, OpenAI's software developers have been working to create artificial intelligence capable of advanced machine learning through 'deep reinforcement' by observation and exploration, allowing such robots to develop and expand their own skill sets. As the MIT Technology Review reports, the mobile bots utilize such tools as a 2-D laser scanner, 3-D depth sensors, and a versatile grabbing arm to come to grips with the world around them and build up abilities in their neural networks as they figure out how to best perform a task.

That process can take many thousands of tries, the Review points out, but OpenAI machine-learning experts such as UC Berkeley's Pieter Abbeel have demonstrated that, where AI is concerned, seemingly simple tasks like folding laundry are often easier learned than programmed. Another benefit to self-training AI, according to researchers, is that fact that one bot's learned skill can be instantaneously disseminated to a whole fleet of its peers, any one of which can later improve upon the method as needed. Overall, MIT notes, "The effort reflects a bet that innovations in software and machine learning, rather than breakthroughs in hardware, are the way to give robotics remarkable new capabilities."

Indeed, “Moving away from having to program robots by hand by endowing robots to learn autonomously is a key element for the future of robotics,” commented Jens Kober, arobot-learning expert from the Netherlands' Delft University of Technology, to the site. Marc Deisenroth, a reinforcement learning-scholar at Imperial College London, added,

If this goal can be achieved, then there will be economic and industrial benefits ... Imagine a Roomba not only cleaning your floor but also doing the dishes, ironing the shirts, cleaning the windows, preparing breakfast.

As the Review points out, such technology could also have a huge impact closer to its home--namely, "[it] could certainly benefit companies backed by Musk and Thiel, as well as those emerging from [co-founder Sam Altman's] Y Combinator." Hopefully those humans whose weekly allowances or whole livelihoods depend on such work, too, will have reason to greet Rosie the Robot's ancestors as warmly.